


there's a ghost on this island (is it the same for you?)

by moonbeatblues



Series: you will pass a graveyard (weren't you someone's son?) [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, a little sad but very soft, but this is mostly just soft, slight descriptions of decay, uhh and mentions of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22878880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: speak with dead (3rd level necromancy):you grant the semblance of life and intelligence to a corpse of your choice within range, allowing it to answer the questions you pose.(essek pays mollymauk's grave a visit)
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast, Mollymauk Tealeaf & Essek Thelyss, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Series: you will pass a graveyard (weren't you someone's son?) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647691
Comments: 12
Kudos: 196





	there's a ghost on this island (is it the same for you?)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from antichrist by the 1975-- so much of their early stuff has m9 vibes and it kills me
> 
> i break the speak with dead rules a good deal but a) essek is very powerful and sexy and b) it's about the storytelling, babey!!
> 
> also i definitely have titled a fic based on antichrist before but like..... it's one of Those Songs

“hello, um—” 

he shifts uncomfortably, the soft leather of his boots sliding against itself where his legs touch, crossed under him on the ground. “mollymauk, right?”

it’s starting to snow again, soft ethereal flakes that fall apart at the slightest touch of warmth, and they’re starting to soak into his traveling cloak.

it’s funny, you know, how he never thought to buy one before this. how he never thought of going somewhere without the reminder that he is important, that he is special, that he’s worth something to someone.

as if no one would believe it otherwise.

he wonders if caduceus would be angry with him for digging, for disturbing a grave. maybe they all would— from their tone, he can tell that mollymauk was dear to them. but, well, ignorance can be feigned— slowly, he’s learning not to feel like his image topples in someone’s mind the moment he makes a mistake. and he needs to know, okay? he just needs it.

the body before him rises slightly— curious, how caduceus’s trademark fungi seem almost to serve as a facsimile for tissue, tendons, in this moment, knitting the bones together enough for movement— and nods. essek suddenly remembers this spell has a limit and curses under his breath.

it’s not as if he’d gotten to practice, though, right? it was hard enough to learn the spell, to even get someone to teach it to him— the den’s coroner had looked at him strangely— _funny, i thought your type was more interested in making corpses and leaving them for someone else._

he’ll just have to be more careful.

“i, uh, i wanted to ask you about caleb widogast, if you remember him—” he pauses for a moment and then the rest of his thought comes rushing out of him so mollymauk— what was once mollymauk— doesn’t try to answer yet.

“did you love him?”

there’s a long silence— behind him, his horse snorts out a big cloud of breath and paws at the dirt. caleb had told him about when they’d had to travel on foot, and how molly would still be with them if they hadn’t. what would that mean, he thinks, for himself? whether they’d have had a fraction of the interest in him, if they’d still had their dear friend. if he’d still be alone, still cold inside. if he’d have made the wrong choice, when it mattered. 

he’d wanted to try it for himself, taking the long way. sleeping afraid under the stars, long days of dust kicked up by the horse. feeling small under the sky, fragile. mortal.

the corpse nods, and fear and sorrow climb in his throat like vines.

“ah,” he says, and swallows hard and scratchy. “i see—"

“i know who you are, you know.”

“what?”

another thing he’d forgotten about the spell— it lets them speak.

“jester’s tried to message me before. she thinks it doesn’t work, but i still heard them.” it’s an impossibly dry voice, like sandpaper on sandpaper. fibers from the fungi shift and stretch as the head tilts.

"oh."

“she sounded happy when she talked about you. that’s enough for me.”

essek looks at the body of mollymauk tealeaf for a moment, first at where the horns curl out from the skull, back into an elegant spiral. jewelry still dangles from them, faded and covered almost entirely in dirt. the lower half of the breastbone is broken off entirely, as if crushed inward, and cracks spiderweb up out toward the ribs.

“does it hurt?”

“what?” and yet, he thinks mollymauk knows already.

“dying.”

he’s not afraid, not really— if things stay as they are, he will live another 400 years, at least. far longer than caleb. mollymauk’s skull regards him, and even without the bright red eyes caleb had told him about, he thinks that mollymauk can tell he’s not asking about himself.

“it doesn’t have to.”

“would you have chosen to be consecuted?”

he doesn’t ask if mollymuak knows what he means.

“i don’t know.” the body of mollymauk lifts its bare, skeletal hands, examines where they’re wrapped in thin fibers. “maybe, if i believed it would work. if i believed i was supposed to live any longer than i did.”

“but you didn’t.” it’s not a question.

“no.”

that same silence blooms between them, again, and then mollymauk’s body begins to lie down again, to slot itself back into the space the dirt has left for it.

“wait, i am not done—”

“that was five,” mollymauk says breezily. “i have no need to answer you further.”

essek reaches forward, presses one hand to the broken sternum. as though touch will extend the spell.

“i don’t think you’ll mind this last one.”

mollymauk says nothing, but pauses all the same.

“are you at peace?”

if he could, essek thinks, mollymauk would smile. he can hear it in the voice as the body lies back down fully, gazing up at the wide, winter-white sky.

“yes.”

essek stands again, brushes dirt from his pants. the cloak he knows to be mollymauk’s still hangs from the branch over the grave, catching and billowing for a moment on the wind and falling again. the blood that blooms across it is still red, somehow, bright red. _to match his eyes_ , he supposes.

“thank you.”

essek is not a particularly religious man, but as he draws the dirt up and back over the body he says a prayer to the god caleb tells him is mollymauk’s. the moonweaver. a trickster. fitting.

he sends the horse away, first, back to the zadash stables. the part of the journey he knows he needed to spend on foot is over.

then, he sits and traces out the sigil for the xhorhaus in chalk, the way caleb still likes to. the sigil is different than the ones to any other major city— he and caleb had made it themselves, made it so that the magic worked just by drawing it, so they could all use it. so everyone could return home, if they wanted, after just a minute of work. because coming home should never be hard.

he chalks in the larger circle first, filling it inwards, and thinks about the smith in the gallimaufry he’d visited earlier that week.

(finally, veth’s shoulders stop shaking with laughter, and she tips her chair forward again.

“sorry, sorry,” she wheezes. “it’s cute, really. you should buy rings.”

“rings?”

“it’s a sign you’re together, if you both wear them.”

“you don’t have one from your husband,” he grouses, pride hurt, and backtracks immediately when her face falls. “i’m sorry, i—”

“it’s okay,” veth says, and looks at her hand, at the shaky black shape tattooed onto one of her fingers. essek recognizes jester’s handiwork. one of her earlier pieces, he guesses— it bears so little resemblance to the flowers he knows she’d given yasha, the elegant spirals he can see on beau’s back, briefly, when she stretches, but the color, the curiously deep shade of black is the same. 

“i lost it, awhile ago. we got these instead, after—” and her face scrunches a little further. they don’t talk about it too much, about the time before they trusted each other this way. about the things they all did before they had to think about if it was wrong. “you know.”

she brightens again. “but i’m sure caleb would like one. just make sure you measure beforehand.”)

and he had, had made sure caleb was deeply asleep in the plush armchair they’d had brought into the study, book threatening to tip backwards from his lap. he’d ordered one silver, for himself and one gold for caleb. with a blink he remembers the mismatched jewelry hanging from mollymauk’s horns, and laughs, completing the circle home.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @seafleece on tumblr, come say hello! i write a lot of meta about campaign 2 these days


End file.
